We Indians cannot live without our lentils 🙂 Especially the vegetarians. Lentils or Daals form the major part of staple food across India. You will find these tiny protein rich legumes cooked along with basic Indian spices. Dal recipes are cooked daily and served with steamed rice, roti and sabji. That is the ideal balance meal in most of Indian families.

Like many, I too cook these daals daily in my kitchen. Most often the gujarati toor daal and also south indian sambar both my favorites. Along with these, I also cook punjabi daal tadka, lasooni daal and daal palak. The most common lentil dal in all these recipes I just mention are toor daal and chana daal. You will find these two in most of the daal recipes in Indian household. Apart from these, other dal such as moong, masoor and urad are also cooked.

Today I am sharing yet another simple and easy to cook daal recipe – sabut masoor dal recipe. This type of daal are famous in dhabas and road side eating joints. I remember driving near Pune where we had this delicious dhaba style masoor daal. We ordered “akha masoor dal” as they say in marathi along with some jowar bhakhri. And trust me that was yummy. The masoor daal cooked in dhaba is usually a little spicy. The jowar bhakhri that they serve along with it balance the taste. The combination is simply amazing.

Coming back to the recipe of sabut masoor daal, let me share this easy recipe today. This recipe is Dhaba style and thus is very basic. When you order this daal in a restaurant or dhaba, the chef has to cook this daal in minutes and serve hot. And thus the recipe is quite simple. We need very few ingredients to make this dhaba style masoor dal recipe.

Sabut Masoor Dal Recipe (Dhaba style Akha Masoor Daal)

Lets start off by rinsing the sabut masoor daal in water thoroughly. Once cleaned, take the masoor in pressure cooker and pour water in it. Cook the masoor dal on medium flame in pressure cooker for 7-8 minutes or 4 whistles. Once cooked, turn off the gas and let the cooker cools down completely. Open the lid and check if the masoor is cooked. If not, cook for 1 more whistle.

While masoor is getting pressure cooked, we can start with some pre-preparation. For this sabut masoor dal recipe we will need finely chopped tomatoes and onion. Also we will need ginger paste and garlic paste.

Lets start the tampering process. In a thick bottom pan / kadhai, heat the oil. Once the oil is hot add cumin seeds and let it crackles. Then add ginger paste and garlic paste. Also add 1 whole green chili slit into two pieces.

Sauté the ginger garlic paste in Oil for 30 seconds.

Now add finely chopped onion in the oil. Cook the onions in oil for 2 minutes until they start turn golden. Stir the onions once a while when they are cooking.

Now add finely chopped tomatoes in the cooked onion. Mix everything well and cook again for 2 minutes until the tomatoes blends well in the gravy.